A Snowflake Cluster For Freshly Made Sketches' 400th Challenge

I am a Virginian which means I like snow as long as it melts before I have to drive in it and white Christmases are pretty much only in my dreams.  I can remember two and one of those was more a heavy frost which was gone by mid morning.  That said, snowflakes are one of my favorite design elements for a Christmas card, so I was excited to see this new die in the new Hero Arts catalog and couldn't wait to play with it.    I decided to interpret the rectangle in this Freshly Made Sketch as any shape in order to use my new toy die.

Did you notice this is Freshly Made Sketches' 400th(!) sketch?  What a milestone!  I started playing when it was sketch #64.  Congratulations and thank you to the talented, dedicated folks who have given their time and creativity to keep this challenge going.

I made the background by dropping blue, purple, and silver Hero Arts Glimmer inks on an acrylic block, misting it with water, and smooshing it on to Archer Cold Press watercolor paper.  I love the metallic shine of these inks and the sandy texture created by using them on watercolor paper.  The photograph does not do it justice.  Because the watercolor paper is so much thicker than the Galvanized  Metal cardstock next to it, you could see the white ragged edge, so I sponged Chipped Sapphire Distress Oxide Ink along the edge to make it less noticeable.

I cut the snowflakes five times, trimmed off the flourishes and bottom snowflake of four of them and stacked them to give the two upper snowflakes dimension.  I also popped up the sentiment with foam tape.  The color sparkles are from Hampton Arts and the clear from Close to My Heart.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi